Long-lived collective Rydberg excitations in atomic gas achieved via ac-Stark lattice modulation

Stanisław Kurzyna; Bartosz Niewelt; Mateusz Mazelanik; Wojciech Wasilewski; Michał Parniak

doi:10.22331/q-2024-08-02-1431

Long-lived collective Rydberg excitations in atomic gas achieved via ac-Stark lattice modulation

Stanisław Kurzyna^1,2, Bartosz Niewelt^1,2, Mateusz Mazelanik¹, Wojciech Wasilewski^1,2, and Michał Parniak^1,2

¹Centre for Quantum Optical Technologies, Centre of New Technologies, University of Warsaw, Banacha 2c, 02-097 Warsaw, Poland
²Faculty of Physics, University of Warsaw, Pasteura 5, 02-093 Warsaw, Poland

Published:	2024-08-02, volume 8, page 1431
Eprint:	arXiv:2402.06513v4
Doi:	https://doi.org/10.22331/q-2024-08-02-1431
Citation:	Quantum 8, 1431 (2024).

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Abstract

Collective Rydberg excitations provide promising applications ranging from quantum information processing, and quantum computing to ultra-sensitive electrometry. However, their short lifetime is an immense obstacle in real-life scenarios. The state-of-the-art methods of prolonging the lifetime were mainly implemented for ground-state quantum memories and would require a redesign to effectively work on different atomic transitions. We propose a protocol for extending the Rydberg excitation lifetime, which in principle can freeze the spin-wave and completely cancel the effects of thermal dephasing. The protocol employs off-resonant ac-Stark lattice modulation of spin waves by interfering two laser beams on the atomic medium. Our implementation showed that the excitation lifetime can be extended by an order of magnitude, paving the way towards more complex protocols for collective Rydberg excitations.

Featured image: The main idea for our protocol lies in cancelling out all spatial dependencies of the collective superatom excitation, therefore rendering the thermal motion in the atomic ensemble irrelevant.

Popular summary

Rydberg atoms are now a workhorse of quantum technologies, being used in sensing, computing and simulations. Our work explores one of the less known types of Rydberg qubits, where the quantum information is encoded collectively over many ground-state atoms, with only one Rydberg atom excited in the cloud. Such encoding of information is also often called a superatom. There are several advantages to this approach, as a superatom is much more likely to couple efficiently to light, as the emission is enhanced by all the ground-state atoms around. Furthermore, the superatom quantum state is immune to loss of even many atoms from the cloud, as the information is spread out over many of them. One of the outstanding challenges has been the lifetime, or the coherence, of the superatom state. This has been due to residual thermal motion of atoms in the cloud. In our work we solve this problem by encoding the superatom state without any spatial dependencies in the atomic cloud, such that their motion – while still present – simply does not matter anymore. In order to achieve this, we use additional laser fields that remove the spatial dependencies acquired during a typical Rydberg superatom generation procedure. With this, our coherence times approach the coherence of single atoms, as predicted by fundamental effects. We envisage applications of our superatom generator for both quantum metrology and in optically-interconnected Rydberg quantum computers.

► BibTeX data

@article{Kurzyna2024longlivedcollective,
  doi = {10.22331/q-2024-08-02-1431},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.22331/q-2024-08-02-1431},
  title = {Long-lived collective {R}ydberg excitations in atomic gas achieved via ac-{S}tark lattice modulation},
  author = {Kurzyna, Stanis{\l{}}aw and Niewelt, Bartosz and Mazelanik, Mateusz and Wasilewski, Wojciech and Parniak, Micha{\l{}}},
  journal = {{Quantum}},
  issn = {2521-327X},
  publisher = {{Verein zur F{\"{o}}rderung des Open Access Publizierens in den Quantenwissenschaften}},
  volume = {8},
  pages = {1431},
  month = aug,
  year = {2024}
}

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Cited by

[1] Stanisław Kurzyna, Bartosz Niewelt, Mateusz Mazelanik, Wojciech Wasilewski, Rafał Demkowicz-Dobrzański, and Michał Parniak, Frontiers in Optics + Laser Science 2025 (FiO, LS) FTu6C.4 (2025) ISBN:978-1-957171-52-4.

[2] Yuechun Jiao, Changcheng Li, Xiao-Feng Shi, Jiabei Fan, Jingxu Bai, Suotang Jia, Jianming Zhao, and C. Stuart Adams, "Suppression of Motional Dephasing Using State Mapping", Physical Review Letters 134 5, 053604 (2025).

[3] Xiao-Feng Shi, Yan Lu, Yuechun Jiao, and Jianming Zhao, "Coherence enhancement of Rydberg polaritons", Physical Review Applied 24 4, 044028 (2025).

[4] Xiao-Qiang Shao, Shi-Lei Su, Lin Li, Rejish Nath, Jin-Hui Wu, and Weibin Li, "Rydberg superatoms: An artificial quantum system for quantum information processing and quantum optics", Applied Physics Reviews 11 3, 031320 (2024).

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